Stars and Steel Guitars
by Romula1
Summary: Young English painter arrives at Montmatre and sets about exploring the city of Paris and its inhabitants - especially Audrey the transvestite. Not slashy, as the painter is female. Please r+r; it'll encourage me! Warning: Lots of French; apologies for an


Étoiles et Guitares en Acieres (Stars and Steel Guitars)  
  
Chapter 1  
  
"Excuse-moi, Madame, ou est-ce que l'ho." The young voice trailed off apprehensively as the person she had been addressing turned to face her. "Pardon, je suis anglaise, je n'savais pas."  
"Stop babbling. What was it you were looking for?" the transvestite glared at the small woman.  
"Erm." she hesitated again, still staring up at the local in surprise. "L'hot.I mean the hotel. The Hotel du Monmatre?"  
The man sighed dramatically and extended a lace encrusted arm. "Take that street, follow it under the archway, past the priest who tells you to repent, and it's the last building on your right. Don't turn down any of the side roads - there are about six before the street comes to a dead end at the Moulin Rouge."  
Noting that a bitter anger was also beginning to tinge the man's words, the young English woman nodded, "merci," and set off down the street, clutching her bags tightly.  
As told, a priest approached her just before the archway. He was holding his Bible before him like a water-diviner, as though he could ward back the demons of the underworld with it. "Ma cherie, c'est un village pénible." he began, dangling his rosary above his book as he approached her.  
She side-stepped him, eyeing his pristine black robes with distaste, "Mademoiselle, arret! Arret s'il vous plait!" but she ignored his desperate pleading as she hurried beneath the high stone archway. A group of middle- aged women were smoking in the shadows and cackled nastily as she passed them, one calling something after her retreating form which caused the others to laugh all the more furiously.  
The claustrophobic street was teeming with drunks and prostitutes and others of a similar nature. The woman couldn't wait until she reached her apartment and got out her canvasses and paints and began to record some of the wonderful characters she'd seen. The 'hotel' she had reserved a room at was a tall, dirty white building on the corner, with an incongruous red lit sign affixed to the wall overlooking the square where the Red Windmill lay. 'L'amour' the sign read, and the woman thought it ironic to have a sign about love hanging over Paris' biggest brothel.  
The inside of the hotel was an odd mixture of beautifully polished and lovingly retained wooden panelling on the floors and desk, and peeling, mouldy walls. There were patches where the two met, as pieces of the ancient plaster came off the walls and littered the dark floor with pink and green and grey and cream dust.  
The old woman at the desk wore a stern expression, a pair of woollen fingerless gloves, and a dusty black dress. "Qu'est-ce que votre nom de famille?" she said without preamble.  
"Leuria, je m'appelle Mary Leuria."  
"Ah, you are the English woman. You are in room 14, I will show you now. Follow, please," and she headed up the set of stairs that directly faced the door. There was a large window at the top of the first small flight, but though it provided plenty of light to the lobby below, it had not been cleaned in years and could have almost been frosted glass for all Mary knew. Her room was up the next flight of stairs, and the sudden darkness was a shock after the white light of the window. A figure approached them down the corridor. It was a man wearing a bowler hat and stooping a little beneath the low ceiling, and he stopped next to the landlady as she began to unlock room 14.  
"Est-ce qu'il ya une chambre libre, Madame?" he asked.  
"Non. Vous doivez rester dans votre chambre. Tolouse aime-vous, vous aimez Tolouse. C'est parfait."  
"Mais le plafond-"  
"Oui, je prendrai la monnaie de Tolouse. Dans un ou deux ans je faisai votre plafond."  
Mary listened with interest to their talk, wondering what could have happened to the man's ceiling, and why a Tolouse she assumed to be Lautrec was concerned.  
"Your room," the landlady pushed the thin wooden door open and the man peered in over her shoulder jealously. It was a light room, the window facing the square below, and bare - there was only a low, flat-looking bed, a rickety wooden occasional table and chair, and a corkboard on the wall, which was beginning to curl at the corners with damp. The walls were the same decaying plaster as the ones in the lobby.  
"Thanks," Mary smiled and took the key from the gloved hand. She was turning to close the door when the man with the ceiling problem stopped her.  
"You're English?" he asked, a delighted grin on his face.  
"Yes, and so are you I take it?" she replied, equally glad to have found someone to relate to as he apparently was.  
"My name's Christian," he offered a hand.  
Putting her bags down, Mary shook it. "Mary. I'm here hoping to paint, but with Tolouse Lautrec above me I don't think I'll be doing much of note!"  
Christian's grin broadened, "Oh, I wouldn't worry about him - Tolouse is a really agreeable person. I suppose that thing about the ceiling sounded a bit strange."  
"I was rather curious, I'll admit," Mary said, studying the young Englishman. He wasn't particularly tall, but tall enough that he had to bow his head a little in the small hotel. He had dark hair and excited blue eyes that seemed to sparkle with the whole joy of life, as if all the lights in Paris were reflected in them.  
"Well, what happened was-I'm a writer, you see. I've come here to Montmatre to write poetry about the Bohemian values. I was sitting in front of my typewriter when a-" he broke off, laughing a little. "You're not going to believe me - you've not been here long enough."  
"Try me," Mary smiled encouragingly.  
"Well, a narcoleptic Argentinean dancer fell through my ceiling." Christian studied her expression earnestly; dimples on his chin and cheeks now framed his grin.  
Mary said nothing, but laughed, and Christian continued his little tale. Being a writer he included every detail, explaining the unusual characters that had been in Tolouse's apartment with a level of description that Mary marvelled at. When he described Audrey the writer she exclaimed that he sounded familiar.  
"I'm sure I saw that exact person this morning - I asked him for directions to this hotel, but from behind I asked him as 'madame.' It was all terribly embarrassing," she giggled.  
Christian laughed with her, "yes one must be careful how one speaks with Audrey - I don't think anyone's really sure about him. In any way."  
With that they ended their first meeting, deciding that to start with something familiar to both and to end with something familiar to both made for a good conversation.  
Mary settled into her room happily, placing her easel by the window and the small wooden chair in front of it. She put the occasional table by her side and her oil paints on it, and to the corkboard she pinned the rough sketches she'd made on the train from Calais. There was an old man, stooped with age but wearing a ridiculously tall top hat. He was travelling in his best suit, and the monocle he wore looked almost to have been embedded into his liver spotted skin. Another sketch was of a girl, about eleven years old, with her hair coifed fashionably onto of her head. Her legs did not quite reach the floor as she leaned back in the train seat, and her dark eyes and pouting lips judged all whom she saw.  
Now that her important belongings were unpacked Mary began to unpack her clothes. She didn't have an excessive amount of them, but what she did have was several very smart, classical styles of suit and one evening dress. She hung them from the hook on the back of the door casually and rummaged in her small handbag. All that was left of the meal she'd had on the train was the empty sugar sachet she'd kept because of the illustration on it. Mary decided that now was as good a time as any to explore the local area and she brushed a bit of plaster dust from her voluminous skirt before leaving her room.  
As she passed through the lobby, she gave the landlady at her desk a cheery grin, but received only a sour look in return. Feeling that there was no use worrying oneself about it, Mary carried on regardless, stepping back into the thick air of the street. She headed for the bar in the Moulin Rouge gardens beneath the gigantic elephant boudoir. Colourful paper lamps hung along the length of it, and as twilight began to descend upon Paris the bartender travelled from lamp to lamp, lighting them with her set of matches. The old woman approached Mary, still shaking the life from her last match. She wore a yellow dress adorned with floppy blue flowers and black tassels. Her orange dyed hair was pulled severely away from her wrinkled face, a face that still bore copious amounts of stage make-up including enough rouge to make a clown jealous.  
"Qu'est-ce que vous prenez, ma cherie?" she asked in a voice ravaged by cigarette smoke.  
"Est-ce que vous vendez de la nourriture?" Mary was starving.  
"You're not French, are you kid?" the woman asked, leaning heavily on the bar, heedless of the exposure her ill-fitting dress was in danger of providing.  
"No. How could you tell?" Mary was intrigued by this old woman, a remnant of the days of Charles Zidler, the original owner of the club.  
"It's the accent. You've not quite got it yet, but you're doing well compared to the other tourists I've seen around. Are you here to buy of here to sell?"  
Mary's stomach growled a reminder, and she smiled ruefully, "At the moment I'd like to buy something to eat, but I'm here to sell really."  
The woman turned and got a battered menu printed on card and placed it on top of the bar. "Well, the market's pretty saturated, but I think you'll do well with that fresh faced innocent look. The rakes love something different."  
"Oh, no, I didn't mean like that.I'm a painter!" Mary exclaimed, embarrassed though she knew she shouldn't be by such a thing.  
The woman grunted. "Yeah, well that market's pretty saturated too. Personally I think you'd do better in the other line of work."  
Mary chose not to even attempt interpreting that comment. "I'll have a croque-monsiur, please, and an absinthe."  
The woman smirked and took the menu away before fading into the darkness at the back of the bar to prepare Mary's supper. A man on a stool near to Mary's right turned and faced her with an earnest expression. There were two glasses on the bar in front of him; one empty one, and one nearly drained. The latter he clutched tightly in a sweaty hand. His face was round and as sweaty as his palms, his thick mop of brown hair grabbing at his forehead like a parasite. "You a painter, eh? Don't believe Disco Sally - she thinks every girl should be a whore. My name's Jean and I run a little store just outside The Village of Sin. I sell paintings too."  
Mary's interest was awakened. "May I bring you some of mine to sell? How do you operate?"  
"First I must see whether you 'ave talent. Do you carry any sketches?" his French accent was thicker than any others Mary had spoken with, possibly due to the two empty glasses before him.  
She rummaged in her handbag and pulled out the napkins from the train. They were adorned with inky scrawls and scribbles, unusual characters peering out with intense eyes. "I did these whilst travelling. I'm afraid I don't have anything better with me."  
Jean took them carefully, turning them this way and that on the bar to examine every corner and every detail. "They are very beautiful to be sure, M'ameselle. But can you paint?"  
"Well I think so," Mary said indignantly. "I'll bring a couple in first thing tomorrow morning, before the crowds. What time do you open?"  
Handing the napkins back, the storeowner grimaced. "There are always crowds in Paris, M'ameselle. My shop opens at nine o'clock, and is called 'Un Petit Coin.' Ask a passer-by for directions, for I am not so good at giving them. I promise you nothing, 'owever, as I 'ave seen nothing of your painting skills."  
"Thank you," Mary smiled, stuffing the napkins cruelly back into the depths of her bag. Disco Sally clattered a plate and a glass down on the bar. The toasted cheese and ham sandwich wasn't the most glamorous aspect of French cuisine to be sure, but it sufficed for the hungry English woman. After polishing off the toastie and downing her absinthe like a man, Mary paid Disco Sally for the meal and gave her a modest tip before wishing Jean goodnight and making her way back across the gardens to the hotel. This time as she stamped through the echoing lobby Mary did not bother to give the landlady a cheery smile, though she still received a sour look from the hag. 


End file.
